Alan Dubin knows something about making extreme music. As the vocalist of long-running abstract doom terrorists Khanate, he screamed and howled like a tortured animal snared in an endless nightmare. His current project Gnaw specializes in a similarly avant-garde mix of metal and noise, and its forthcoming EP, Barking Orders, due January 31st via Sleeping Giant Glossolalia, pulls no punches. (You can pre-order it now via Bandcamp.) It opens with a cover of Einstürzende Neubauten's 1981 song "Kollaps" and, from there, transitions into three originals that Dubin aptly describes as "noisy, experimental, electronic songs." A standout is "Rid the City," a nearly nine-minute bad trip on which the vocalist whispers, shrieks and caterwauls, his words inspired by the 1977 Son of Sam murders.
Today (December 16th), Gnaw have teamed with Revolver to unleash the song as well as its eerie animated video, which also delves into the story of Sam of Sam. It was created by The Deletist, an artist, experimental filmmaker, graphic novelist and analogue/electronic musician who currently works inside a converted off-grid 20-ton diesel box truck that functions as a 100-square-foot recording and art studio affectionately dubbed "BleakHausTruk."
"'Rid the City' was animated using manipulated digital images that were redrawn, morphed and layered together to create the interior scenes, exterior shots and character movements in a stop-motion format," The Deletist comments of the video. "On the first listen to this creeping cinematic track, immediate and compelling imagery of an agoraphobic and paranoid nature appeared. While researching the specifics of the Summer of Sam murders in Queens and Brooklyn in 1977, a particular aspect of David Berkowitz's pathology was striking: one of his earliest traumas was discovering that his young, dark-haired mother conceived him in a car during a careless summer fling with a father he never met. This seems to be the motivation for killing young couples in cars later in life, that he is essentially trying to murder his mother and father so that he — or anyone else — might be spared from living.
"In this current climate of celebrity-worship that has surpassed itself by now living in the white house, where the personal belongings of mass murderers sell for massive amounts of money and respect online, where countless reams of speculative psychological profiles have been written on the subject of each and every serial killer's morbidly fascinating psychopathy, it felt necessary to honor the innocent dead instead. Honor the untold deaths that happen during a sensationalized blood-shedding event, but whose unknown faces never get media attention or have their names added to the official body count.
"It is now thought that almost half of the population reacts to extreme stress through some form of self-harm. Perhaps it is to have some kind of autonomous control in an anxiously chaotic and distressingly uncertain situation where isolation has left you feeling trapped and powerless, and your only escape is through the metaphysical transformation into collective unconsciousness."
Watch the video above, and see the cover art and track listing for Barking Orders below.
Barking Orders track listing:
1) Kollaps
2) Cry Louder
3) Rid the City
4) Then the Sunrise
